Riak CS

Riak CS

Riak CS (Cloud Storage) is simple, open source storage software built on top of Riak. It can be used to build public or private clouds, or as reliable storage to power applications and services. It features:

Highly available, fault-tolerant storage

Large object support and multipart upload

S3-compatible API and authentication

Multi-tenancy and per-user reporting

Simple operational model for adding capacity

Robust stats for monitoring and metrics

OpenStack integration with Object Storage API and Keystone authentication service

Data can be replicated across data centers using real-time or full sync. Cost considerations when deploying a large object storage product, such as Riak CS Enterprise, can take a variety of shapes. Riak CS pricing is flexible for Service Providers looking for a usage based model, or Enterprises calculating their investment through node count and resultant capacity. Contact us to discuss your use case in greater detail.

The Basho Professional Services team offers packaged and custom solutions including developer and operations training, Riak CS Health Checks, and project-based engagement services.

APIs

Storage API

The Riak CS storage API is S3-compatible. Storage operations can be executed using existing S3 libraries and tools. The storage API has simple, RESTful GET, PUT, and DELETE operations for objects and buckets. Riak CS supports multipart upload. S3-style ACLs are provided for managing object and bucket permissions and Riak CS supports the S3 authentication scheme, with support for query parameter and header authorization. Riak CS also supports integration with OpenStack’s Object Store, known as Swift, and Keystone authentication platform.

Administration and Users

The Users API is the interface for user creation, deletion, and credentials. Riak CS can be configured so either only administrators can create users or anyone can create a user directly.

Storage and Usage Statistics

Operators can use the Riak CS storage and usage statistics API methods to support use cases such as accounting, subscription, billing, or multi-group utilization for public or private clouds. Riak CS access statistics and network utilization are tracked on a per-user basis.

ARCHITECTURE

How It Works

Riak CS is built on Riak. When an object is uploaded, Riak CS breaks the object into smaller blocks that are streamed, stored, and replicated in the underlying Riak cluster. Each block is associated with metadata for retrieval. Since data is replicated, and other nodes automatically take over responsibilities of nodes that go down, data remains available even in failure conditions.

OPERATIONS

Monitoring and Metrics

Riak CS exposes stats on critical operations, which are accessible via HTTP request. Additionally, Riak CS and Riak both have DTrace support for analysis of running systems, as well as Syslog support for log aggregation.

Scaling Up

Adding new capacity to your Riak CS cluster simply involves installing Riak CS on a new physical node and joining it with the cluster. Riak automatically redistributes data and ownership so all nodes have equal responsibility, which prevents storage hot spots and decreases the operational burden of adding new nodes.